Monday, February 12, 2007

My first false fire alarm

Sundays, this library closes at 5:00 p.m. Yesterday, at 4:07 p.m. the fire alarm starts to go off. I was in of all places, the restroom.

There's construction going on in th building, so sometimes the fire alarm goes off accidently. This was not the case. So by 4:12 p.m. we havd almost all of our floor cleared and my boss told me to exit the building.

I had just glanced at the evacuation instructions, to see what my assigned duty was. I failed to pay attention to what area the staff was supposed to meet in.

Why, oh why did I go to the front of the building? I still thought it might have been a false alarm and they would reopen the building immediately.

This is what I over heard:

Patron(who comes here everyday, stays all day, and wears the same thing,) " This is a waste of the tax payers money. That was probably a false alarm because they don't want us in there. This library is always waisting our tax payer dollars!"

He was periodically looking at me at he said all of that. After the last sentence, I couldn't hold it in any longer and began laughing.

The Patron then looked at me and said, " You are laughing, but I am serious and I know that the library is just waisting our tax payer money!"

I knew that if I stayed in that spot any longer, I would have said some things to hurt that man.
I was laughing because I was thinking that that man knows he doesn't pay taxes. If anything, he gets SSI and that is part of my tax dollars supporting him monthly.

In my effort not to enrage the patrons even more, I decided to move to the other side of the building.

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